Krav Maga Blog - May 2015

When people talk about situational awareness (SA), they normally focus on individuals and people e.g. certain movements, behaviors and actions that identify someone in the environment may have harmful intent, and/or be engaged in a criminal activity. What often gets overlooked when considering what situational awareness is, and how it can be developed, is the physical landscape of the environment, and how this needs to be considered and taken into account, as well as the ways in which it can affect our awareness. One way that an environment can affect our situational awareness is in regard to sound. If you are...

I personally believe there are a lot of dangers and pitfalls that come about from knife disarming. One being that in reality it is a lot harder than it looks, or may have been experienced in training. Many Krav Maga instructors will tell you that once you have softened your attacker up with punches etc. disarming becomes quite straightforward. Unfortunately this is a common Krav Maga misconception; once you stop striking, unless you have battered the person into unconsciousness – which is also hard to do - their focus quickly returns to the knife, especially when they feel your other...

Experience can be a valuable thing however it can also limit and restrict our understanding, and prevent us from being open to the experiences of others along with new ideas etc. It may seem that the most battle-hardened and experienced instructor, is best qualified to talk about violence however this may not in fact be the case. In this blog article, I’m going to try and examine the pros and cons of firsthand experiences of violence, and why and how they need to be combined with others things in order for them to be relevant and applicable to others. There are...

I’m a big believer in preemptive strikes and attacks; if violence is inevitable, it is better to be the one who acts first, rather than being the one who responds. In most altercations I’ve been in, witnessed, or been told about, I would guess that in 8 out of 10 cases, it was the person who attacked first who was successful. In this blog article, I want to talk about why preemptive striking is so effective, and why most people are reluctant to engage in it. An important thing to remember about the majority of violent situations, is that they are...

In my last blog, I talked about how to survive when you were caught in a situation involving civil unrest e.g. protests, demonstrations, riots etc. This blog article will expand on some of the ideas that were introduced, as well as looking at such incidents from a different perspective, such as what to do if you are in a vehicle, or trapped in a building etc. Most people feel safe when they are in a car or similar vehicle, however if you are caught in a traffic pile up, during a protest or demonstration, your car may end up being more...